Now those who know me will probably have guessed that ball sports aren’t my thing. The idea of having hard, bruise-inducing spheres thrown or hit at me at high speeds generally made me want to run away. You may also be thinking about the title, well it’s pretty easy to answer both questions – Cricket had its first recorded mention in 1598, Baseball in 1744. |
Well, In Baseball and Cricket the ball is thrown very differently – both overarm (and both similarly very fast – fastest ball
speeds for both–160km/h), but in cricket with a straight arm and in baseball with a bent arm. Which of these came first and why on earth would I even think about writing about this?
Our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees can throw, but with much less force and much less accurately. So the scientists looked at the physical structure of humans and chimpanzees and shoulder and using computer simulations worked out the features which enable the fast, accurate throw. They then checked these simulations with the Harvard baseball team – attaching braces to their hips, arms and shoulders to change their degree of movement to see what the effects of each difference was. |
From that they could then look back at our human fossil record and see when those features arose. They
found all the necessary features were in place by the time Homo erectus arose nearly two million years ago!
So why do we these scientists think we evolved the features needed to throw fast, hard and accurately?
To hunt.
Until last year it was though that active hunting of large prey, rather than scavenging from other animals or eating the sick, old
or young was reasonably recent only ½ a million years ago or so, about the same time as we see evidence for the first stone spear points.
Then last year a site was found in Tanzania showing the clear killing and eating of adult healthy antelope and wildebeest
2 million years ago – well before the development of stone-tipped spears. These people were Homo habilis, they
had some (but not all) of the features of a modern thrower. So they probably had to wait in ambush (maybe in trees) for their prey, but within a couple of hundred thousand years some of these guys had evolved into Homo erectus – with the full power throws of modern people.
Maybe evolving the ability to throw was an important step into becoming smart!
AWESOME!
Disclaimer:
Oops, didn’t answer which came first.
My bad.
Chimpanzees split from them human lineage about 7 million years ago and can do a straight arm over arm throw (cricket style). Homo erectus from about 1.7 million years ago appear to be the first human species (hominid) which can do the full baseball pitch. You can make the call!
Post disclaimer thanks:
A certain American EES teacher brought this glorious research to my attention. All thanks to her!
Post thanks/post publication admission
My lack of ball sport knowledge has become evident and I have changed this blog to talk about baseball rather than softball after a kindly reader pointed out softballers pitch underarm. Oops!